Starlink is refusing to comply with Brazil's X ban (Update: Starlink will comply)

Don't forget that Musk is also the one who intentionally blocked paid service from Ukraine during a critical moment in the early days of Russia's current genocide, because Musk sucks up to Putin. Dude needs to answer for his actions.

Yep, fuck Musk
- Fuck Musk
  
  Sounds like a French parfum.
  
  Watch out they might actually launch it
~~actions~~ crimes
- Seriously, why hasn't there been an investigation since he's meddling directly with government affairs and working for a foreign enemy?

that depends on who controls the space internet

Secret cabal of space lizard people.
- Watch out for the Jewish space lasers.
  
  Are the Jewish space lasers more dangerous than the Hibernian and Caledonia Rods of god. Im asking incase we need to up our tonnage to match the Jews. I know for a fact we are lagging behind Suomen Helios lance.
That is the catch. Ideally they wouldn't automatically cooperate with the dictators on the ground, but that hasn't been the case.

How about internet that can be blocked at the whims of a billionaire? At least government is supposed to answer to the people.

*Their lobbying shareholders and maybe the people that elected them
Dictatorships don't answer to the people. It's absolutely a problem that billionaires are controlling the flow of information, but it's much worse for a dictator to do it.
- Oh honey, do you really ignore that a huge chunk of dictatorships do it for the money and most are already billionaires? Why exactly do you think Musk supports the orange cheeto?
  
  Because the orange Cheeto wants to cut his taxes so he gets more money. Dictators want power, not money. That's why they are famous for blowing it on such exorbitant things. It's just a means to an end. To billionaires the money is the end.
  
  That's an extremely naïve view of the world. If Musk could sit the chair, he would. What do you think the accumulation of unhinged amounts of wealth is about but increased power? What do you think those opulent displays of wealth from dictators is about but to flaunt that they have all the wealth and power?
  
  Musk could easily buy himself a governorship or a senatorial position and work up from there. That's not his goal. He wants to be the next Thomas Edison. He wants to be admired and remembered.
  
  Dictator's opulent displays of wealth are to stoke their egos. They don't care about the money they spend because they just took it, they didn't earn it. They care about how much control they have over the people around them. They don't care if people like them ,only that they fear them.
  
  Musk has already said he welcomes a chance to work in the Trump administration, so…
- This is about Brazil, which is not a Dictatorship.
- I don't see a difference tbh.
  
  Dictators do things like build and use rape rooms or throw people they don't like out of helicopters.
  
  You think that billionaires don't do that? Have you heard of Harvey Epstein? Who do you think the biggest customers of child trafficking and sex slaves are?
  
  I think you've conflated Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein. Incidentally there is a Harvey Weinstein, but he is a progressive NY State legislator, not whatever either of those two fucks are.
  
  So as long as this one specific billionaire hasn't had someone killed (that we know of) that makes it okay for that one individual to have complete control over what people have access to?
- Brazil’s not a dictatorship though and twitter is breaking their hate speech rules.
  
  Musk is just as bad as most actual dictators with his global reach

Not blockable by any government would be a positive in my book if it didn't imply bloclable by a single billionaire with huge mood swing. Don't forget how musk switched off starlink in Crimea at Putin's request when the Russian realized starlink guided missile were heading towards their ships (Source

That's not exactly what happened. Starlink was already disabled in Crimea when the attack was launched and Musk refused to enable it specifically for the attack. Then the initial reports got a bit tangled up.

But yes, none of this should be up to Musk.

How is a billionaire manchild in charge any better, at least a government is accountable to the people.

In theory, but how many governments can actually be held accountable? The power imbalance is often too great for the people to hold anyone accountable. In many countries, the system is rigged.
- Replace government with billionaire and your statement is made even more true.
- The question was how is it better. Sure there is a question of how much accountability there is with the government...but there is zero with a billionaire.

Controlled by governments or controlled by corpos and the super rich? I say there's hardly an improvement.

Yeah, cables or radio waves, it's the same thing in the end.

What we need (IMO) is another layer on top if the classic internet with encryption and hookers.
- Like i2p or TOR?
  
  Or Tenfingers (my network protocol for decentralised web pages and data) ofc 😌
- This is what IPSec OE was created to solve, but nobody uses it -- instead using things like TLS, which also provides protocol aware non-repudiation.
No, but through the existence of both options, you can get more plurality than by using one individual option.
- If we're talking about corporations I can only assume you mean options in how to get fucked.
Government can throw you in jail.
- Corporate throws you on the street to starve.
  
  They tried that with me once, but I showed them and got a different job.
  
  You got another one job at the the other starlink?
  
  There's a reason the system requires a certain percentage of unemployment to keep working. There's also a reason there's homeless people and children living in flood security.
- Have you heard about this corporation called the church of Latter Day Saints?

Oh? What about internet controlled by a billionaire who makes sure his toxic website featuring his version of “free speech” is always available to protect his profits and spread his bullshit while undermining the policies of a sovereign state?

So much better than the evil government.

How many people is the billionaire incarcerating?
- Good question. He definitely seems like the type that would have a dungeon with captives.
- He got his wealth because his parents owned a slave-powered diamond mine.
  
  Also, as he hides his money and doesn't pay taxes the US government is overburdened and one of their tools is relying on prisons for free labor.
  
  Soooo actually quite a lot.
- Let everyone incarcerated go and see how that works out for you. Not saying everyone deserves to be in there, but go on. Give it a try.
  
  You also forget that billionaires are wealth, and so is any dictator. They both seek to protect that wealth, so it doesn’t matter in the end. A billionaire buys his politicians and you get the same result. You start threatening their money and power and they’ll come after you, whether you want equal rights or sometimes just clean water.
That's better than a dictator who only wants to protect his own power. At least a billionaire can be bought.
- .
  
  What the heck do you think a dictator is? A billionaire running a country.
  
  I think there is a difference in mentality between people who chase power and people who chase money. Bull Gates certainly chases money, but he's not trying to take over a country somewhere.
  
  That may be so, but nonetheless they overlap often enough.
  
  This Bill Gates?
  
  Are you saying he is trying to take over the country by buying all the land? Seems like he's just using land as an investment.
  
  I'm saying that buying insane amounts of agricultural land gives him and his family a permanent rent-seeking position over a basic necessity, so yeah, he is taking over a part of the world.
  
  Owning land is not the same as governing land.
  
  It's not my problem you don't understand the concept of the "ruling class".
  
  Owning vast capital (and land is capital) does give a degree of undemocratic power over government policy.
  
  But go ahead and keep letting billionaires buy up everything until we live in a feudalist society. I'm sure nothing will go wrong.
  
  I'm more worried about billionaires who have literal armies like Erik Prince.
- A billionaire can't be bought, they got billions. It's the dictator that can be bought.
  
  A billionaire chases what gets them the most money. The public can manipulate them by making them lose money. A dictator wants power, which really can only be countered with mass violence.
  
  Musk has lost a tremendous amount of money between X and his negative effect on Tesla sales. Do you feel this has "manipulated" him into being a better person? 🤣
  
  Even with all the losses, he is still the richest man in the world by more than $50 billion. Musk dumped more than half of his Tesla stock and is focusing more on SpaceX now.
  
  Yes, that's my point. Losing money didn't "influence" him.
  
  My point is that he didn't lose a significant amount of money.
  
  🙄
  
  If you are running in the Olympics, it doesn't matter if the 2nd place guy is 5 seconds or 10 seconds behind you. You still get the gold.
- Is Musk doing anything to help people living in dictatorships access information? Or is this just happening in Brazil?
  
  Starlink launched in Africa in 2023, so that covers a few oppressive governments.

Can't calculate the net yet, since we don't know the gross. He has the capability to cause massive damage with the power he wields. It's already clear that he's incapable of providing an unbiased platform. It needs to belong to the people or it can never be trusted

It needs to belong to the people or it can never be trusted

Damn commies!
- The ability to recognize sarcasm doesn't seem to be particularly developed on Lemmy.
  
  And if fucking hate the /s.
  
  I get that simple text doesn't convey as much as images or speech, but, ...i find myself having to add the /s (but it's easier to ignore the downvotes).
  
  The ability to recognize sarcasm doesn't seem to be particularly developed on ~~Lemmy~~ the internet.
  
  FTFY

That’s an arbitrary metric. What about internet across oceans, or across forests? Blocking content is a question of why and what. Shouldn’t we be able to block child exploitation websites? That is to say, of course we can, and it’s very easy. The only question is whether you want that kind of censorship to be up to your service provider or your government.

Governments tend to block things like facts about genocides they have committed and opposing political opinions. I would hope things like child exploitation could be managed at the host level.
- Do you have any idea how eagerly AT&T and Comcast would block half the internet if they had the tiniest profit motive to do so? I wonder how long left wing websites would remain online if it weren’t illegal for multinational corporations to block them.
  
  That's the thing, they is no profit motive to block wide swaths of public viewpoint because that will cost them customers. They will quickly lose business to a competitor who doesn't do that. (Local monopolies aside, which is an entirely different problem).
  
  I wish you were right, but you’re not. Internet providers have monopolies because the cost of laying fiber or launching satellites is so high. That’s precisely what the argument over net neutrality has been about.
  
  They have monopolies because we let them. I say nationalize all communication infrastructure.

it can be (and has been) blocked by musk on occasion though.

What if payments to Starlink are blocked by Brazilian government?

Starlink is free in Brazil right now.
- Is it? Didn't realise Elon was running a charity.
  
  It's literally in the article you're responding to.
  
  You expect me to read the article‽😳
  
  Anyway, I seemed to miss that and this is just Elon being a petulant manchild. But Starlink management has decided to comply with blocking Xitter as of today.
He is in a unique position, theoretically he can make everything go through the country his servers are in assuming they pay over their own satellite internet, illegal… mmm almost certainly but so is keeping Ex Twitter on in Brazil so he probably doesn’t care about that, and it’s essentially exactly what a VPN does sooo, oh yeah they could also just use a VPN I guess.
- Bruh, VPN for what? If Brazil bans payments to Starlink, essentially sanctioning it, how is end user going to circumvent that?
  
  I mean they can jump through hoops to convert currencies etc but most people would just give up and move on.
  
  Paying with Bitcoin is less of a hoop to jump through than it used to be.
  
  But still far to much of a hassle for the general public. Hell, half the people I know refuse to figure out a regular e-transfer/cash app. There's no way they'll even consider bitcoin; or really any other currency.
  
  PayPal venmo WhatsApp

it's already been blocked in ukraine by musk at the request of putin

It's not worth the cost of ruining LEO and the environmental effects of them burning up in the atmosphere

You can block or disrupt communications with LEO.
But you'd need the blessing of the country's government to pump out that much interference continuously.